


the man who bridged the sky

by paperiuni



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Getting to Know Each Other, Identity Issues, M/M, Non-Explicit Sex, Post-Episode: s02e07 How Are Thou Fallen, Romance, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-18
Updated: 2018-11-18
Packaged: 2019-08-25 04:55:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16654648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperiuni/pseuds/paperiuni
Summary: After a dozen globetrotting dates, Alec asks Magnus, "When do I get to take you somewhere?"Magnus isn't really prepared for the question. But he lets Alec arrange their next date, and the answer makes another bridge between them, another gentle beginning.(Set between 2.07 and 2.08.)





	the man who bridged the sky

**Author's Note:**

> Here's some summer romance for your gloomy November night <3
> 
> This was originally part of a series of one-shots I had planned, but the longfic WIPs have commandeered all my time. I'm posting this as a standalone, and maybe there'll be a part two someday.
> 
> The High Bridge is a real place, but I took some artistic liberties. My sincere apologies to people who actually go there.
> 
> Let's pretend that the show timeline makes sense and at least several months actually pass during season 2.

One of the things Magnus always enjoys about a new partner is the globetrotting phase. He's had four hundred years to roam the planet and, if he does say so himself, he's honed an eye for the beautiful and the unusual about it. The world is a banquet of delights for all the senses and should be sampled as such.

Alec laughs when Magnus tells him this. Not derisively, never so, but in the good-natured, quiet way that means that in a corner of his mind, a door is creaking open to let in the light of a new idea.

The next Friday, Alec shows up at his door with a packed backpack and declares himself free for the next 48 hours. Magnus wonders what manner of devilish blackmail his upstanding, honest-to-a-fault Alexander had to commit to make this miracle happen, but decides not to look a gift Shadowhunter in the mouth.

He tells Alec, cheerfully, to just bring his toothbrush, already picturing finding him something more flattering to wear than the eternal muted tee-shirt and jeans with a chance of sturdy work boots.

They go to Paris. For dinner purposes, Alec consents to a razor-sharp black suit that Magnus nudges into a perfect fit with sparking fingers. Magnus quite relishes the sight of a good third of the dining room discreetly choking on their hors d'oeuvres as Alec walks in beside him, tall and wide-eyed and delectable.

Well. Magnus holds himself in check for the duration of the meal. Good things bear waiting for. When they're finally behind closed doors, Alec breaks off kissing Magnus for long enough to strip out of the suit with lamentable efficiency and hang every piece properly.

Magnus, as delighted by Alec _out_ of his gift as in it, backs Alec up against the balcony door. The nightly noises of Montmartre fade under Alec's sweet, rasping breaths in his ear.

He does think Alec enjoys Paris. They wander the city, duck into tiny creperies for lunch, sneak into Sainte-Chapelle after closing time to see the light of the summer evening make love to the towering stained-glass windows.

Next week, it is Prague, steeped in history, then Tokyo in a single stolen day and night. Alec seems more at home among the metropolitan hum and haste. Marrakesh follows, and the long-promised lamb kebab. They escape a late-May heatwave in New York onto the cooler streets of Stockholm. Magnus has a thousand favorite spots across the continents, and Alec trails him across art museums and street markets and wine tastings and natural wonders as the summer goes on.

Given how busy they both are, it is an achievement.

They've just returned after two days in Rhodes, where Alec, to Magnus's mild surprise, took an interest in the island's past. Apparently the Order of Saint John fostered ties to the early Shadowhunters, and thus a weekend Magnus had meant for lying in the sun or shade became dotted with historical curiosities.

Magnus is feeling all that climbing and walking on top of the week that made him yearn for the Mediterranean and its bright shores in the first place, but Alec makes it worth it. He's so careful with his joy, like it's a finite resource. It's a privilege to glimpse it in him.

Presently Alec is in the kitchen, making coffee, so Magnus finishes unpacking with a last flourish and goes to join him. They settle into a companionable silence. Alec has a sunburnt streak across his cheeks. Magnus breathes in the cardamom notes of the coffee. It's both foreign and welcome, this quiet; so much of their time together is spent _doing_ things.

To just be like this, a little sun-dazzled, a little tired, with Alec close by, leaning against the counter like he belongs there—that feels like a gift.

Alec makes a sound at the back of his throat. Magnus looks up from his mug, the moment wavering.

"Anxious to be back to the grind, are you? I was hoping to tempt you with my company for a little more. Say, for a bath to wash off the dust of history?"

"I—" Alec's fingers touch the phone in his thigh pocket. It means nothing as such, Magnus has learned, only a reflex of duty Alec has to knowingly ignore. "Yeah. Sounds good."

So they have a lukewarm, lingering bath under floating candles that Magnus scatters along the bathroom walls on a whim. Magnus lets himself lie in Alec's arms and Alec stroke thoughtful fingers through his hair, until stirring desire pulls him up to kiss Alec. Softly, and again, less so. Kiss by kiss, they slide from lassitude into lust, Alec's skin slick and warm under his hands. Finally Alec pushes him out of the tub and onto his feet and sucks him off, soaking wet and moaning, against the door.

Magnus is ready to blame the summer. That, and the heady froth of newness upon everything they are to each other.

Once Magnus has returned the favor, and they've actually gotten clean and dressed for bed—along the way, Alec decides taking a portal at seven a.m. works just as well as taking one now—Alec dawdles at the foot of the bed. Magnus is perceiving a pattern here. He sits down next to Alec and sets his head lightly against Alec's shoulder.

They sit a moment. A car honks somewhere below the open window. New York is heavy with heat, hazed in street dust.

Leaning back with his palms on the bed, Alec says, "When do I get to take you somewhere?"

Magnus _hmm_ s in an inquisitive sort of way before the weight of the question lands for him. Then he straightens, to find Alec looking at him with cautious warmth. It's a peculiar expression on his typically painfully frank face.

"If you're worried about reciprocity, let me ease your mind." Magnus punctuates this with a kiss to Alec's cheek. "I'm aware I have a few unfair advantages in this area, but I rather enjoy showing you the world."

Alec closes his eye at the peck, then inches it open again. "It's not that. I had fun. I mean, in general, I do. Have fun. Ugh, that's not what this is about."

"Then what is it?"

That prompts a visible fidget. Alec lets his head hang back. "All these amazing places we go to—they're kinda, you know, your places. Which makes sense, because you've had like twenty of my lifetimes to collect them, and it's not like you never ask me where I want to go."

The placid, giving mood between them is wearing thin, though neither is deliberately eroding it. Magnus is reminded of just how young Alec is. He looks it right now, trying to put words to something he's never had to before.

To prompt him would be to condescend. Magnus bites his own quick tongue, aware of how easy it'd be for him to explain Alec to himself.

"It's not like I _have_ places like yours," Alec says, addressing the ceiling.

"Alexander," Magnus hears himself say, and then he needs a follow-up. "If I might suggest something?"

"Yeah?"

"Look at me, please?"

Alec does, with a small, self-conscious huff, bending forward so his hands rest on his out-turned knees. Magnus's thumb at the corner of his mouth tugs a lopsided smile into being. "Okay. I'm looking."

"How about this: next time you're free, you choose what we do. I'll leave the details in your capable hands. Just tell me the time and place."

"No pressure or anything," Alec says against Magnus's hand, cups his own hand under it and presses his lips to the hollow of Magnus's palm. Magnus's heart might skip a beat.

"None whatsoever. I look forward to it."

Alec nods. Then he gathers Magnus close, pulling him down onto the bed with him. They shift and shuffle enough to get under the covers, and Magnus drifts into sleep with the weight of Alec's hand on his chest and Alec's head pillowed on his arm.

That turns out to be the last night they spend together for a week.

The middle of the month turns thunderous, and like most kinds of foul weather, summer storms increase demon activity. Alec chronicles his sudden spate of missions to Magnus in a series of harried text messages that conclude in apologies for his continued absence.

Magnus bears it with relative serenity. He still has Alec's prodigal parabatai inhabiting his guest bedroom, but Jace seems to be taking most of his current life of vice to other venues. Not that Magnus is without sympathy, though he appreciates the lack of semi-naked Seelies slinking out via the fire escape when the sun is barely up. He takes the opportunity to check in with a few colleagues, sort out brewing schisms among his warlocks, hunt down a reference volume or two that his library has been missing.

If he burns a potion base on Saturday by ducking out of the workroom when his phone announces a message from Alec, well, nobody needs to be the wiser.

The message is, typically for Alec, brief and to the point: _Tuesday at 21:00, corner of University A & W 171 St. Dress for trespassing. _

_"Trespassing"?_ Magnus types in answer, trying to remember what there is in the area that might be worth the intrusion. All that comes to mind is a convent of some sort and a truly odious Chinese restaurant where he once found himself after a raucous party at the Hardtail. He never left a fete in that particular company again.

_Yeah. Sensible shoes recommended._

Is this how Magnus sounds when he's setting up a surprise, anticipating the possibility of lighting up Alec's eyes? It sounds like Alec is getting back at him, if Magnus is to entertain the idea that he's capable of such guile.

He pencils _Alexander_ in his day planner for Tuesday and gets on with his week and his definite peace with the lack of Alec in his presence. In the grand scheme of things, he's glad Alec is out there, standing between the eight million mortal souls of Greater New York and the hordes of Hell.

On a smaller scale, Magnus may admit to missing him alarmingly. He's tried to be careful. He's tried to let Alec set the pace and decide how much of Magnus he can handle—though that may be a question Alec isn't equipped to answer. Does he have any idea of what he grasped at with both hands, kissing Magnus at his own wedding?

Does Magnus, for that matter? Other than that Alec makes him feel something he hasn't in decades, this giddy, wayward energy that pulls them together, buoying them over obstacles Magnus would have thought insurmountable.

He's going to think himself into a morass of doubt by Tuesday if he keeps this up.

Thankfully, Catarina answers his call and lets herself be persuaded into sharing a bottle of wine and some reminiscence on the rooftop. Overhead, the clouds fade and a handful of misty stars emerge in the sky. It makes him feel better, both the company and the change in the weather.

Tuesday arrives. Two minutes to nine in the evening, wearing his best approximation of an urban explorer's fashion statement, Magnus opens a portal to University Avenue in the Bronx.

Alec waits by the wrought iron fence that separates the street from the wooded slope that drops down toward the Harlem River. The expressway along the river is thick with traffic. The air is sultry with the remains of a punishingly hot day, even with the wind that moves through the foliage of the trees.

When Magnus reaches him, Alec straightens from his lean against the fence. He's wearing the fingerless gloves that are part of his mission gear, though his only armament is the obligatory seraph blade strapped to his thigh. Magnus surmises Shadowhunters just permanently affix one to their person around their rune ceremony, so this  _is_ Alec at liberty.

The thought pleases him oddly. He sees Alec swallow before he kisses Magnus, gentle and focused, there on the sidewalk.

"Hello to you too," Magnus says, a little too low for so early in the evening. Being kissed by Alec in public shouldn't thrill him as much as it does.

Semi-public, perhaps, since the park behind the fence looks empty. The greenery is growing wildly after the recent rains, its fragrance dense in the twilight as dew creeps into the grass.

"Hey." Something in Magnus's tone seems to be working for Alec, though. He clears his throat. "Here's how we do this. You may wanna glamour yourself, because there's cameras around, but otherwise, from this point on, no magic, no runes. Just us."

"Not that I'm averse to a bit of mischief on such a fine evening—" Magnus blurs himself from casual observation with a quick gesture "—but where are we going, exactly?"

"Down memory lane." There's a crook to Alec's smile, half wistful, half daring. He hoists himself up and over the fence, landing smoothly on the other side. With a small private shrug, Magnus follows him.

They cross the trees, and ahead Magnus spies the recently finished fencing around the end of the High Bridge, which spans the river here. In his memory, the site is in disrepair, rusted and graffiti-covered gates shutting off access to the bridge and the aqueduct running inside it.

"Though I guess we're a little late," Alec says. "In years, not hours."

The sign on the current gate, which is painted a neat dark green, declares the bridge closed for the day. A service building butts against the lamp-dotted deck of the bridge.

Instead of going to the gate, Alec ducks off the path and down the slope to where the side of the bridge parts from the ground. His shoes rustle the undergrowth, rousing the smell of damp earth. Under the trees the evening shadows court darkness. Magnus lets the masking glamour over his eyes slip, and the gloom lightens under the sharper night vision that comes with his warlock mark.

"Here." The abutment of the bridge rises to a height of some twenty feet at the point where Alec stops. He lays his hands on the weather-worn stonework with a curious sense of intimacy. Magnus looks up along its height.

"All right." He chuckles. "Give me a hint. Is there a pack of trolls under the High Bridge that I don't know about? A secret doorway to the Hanging Market? A prime spot for clandestine kissing?"

"Here," Alec says, "is a good spot for clandestine climbing. Just follow me."

 _No magic, no runes_ falls into context as Alec flashes Magnus a frankly boyish grin and starts up the wall. He finds a toehold, digs his fingers into a cracked mortar seam, and scrambles up his own height in the time it takes Magnus to process that this date includes a free-climbing exercise.

Now, he does keep in shape for reasons of vanity and health; his sort of immortality doesn't come with guarantees against illness or injury. It still takes him a moment to watch Alec pick his way from one point to the next, his bare arms pale and the rest of him dark against the stone in the muted palette of Magnus's sight. Grunting, Alec gains the top, his feet thud onto a solid surface, and he leans down toward Magnus, hand extended.

"C'mon."

" _Shadowhunters,_ " Magnus mutters, loud enough for Alec to hear, and braces his foot in the same divot Alec used. "They come with runes for whatever kind of ridiculous—" There, that's the first three feet cleared "—ridiculous physical prowess, which would make this utterly _trivial_."

Three points of contact at all times. Magnus shrugs past a leafy branch that's stretched up to the wall, staining his face and shoulder with damp. "But no, instead their idea of a good time is parkouring up public infrastructure _without_ magical assistance."

"If you're still talking, I should've picked a harder spot." Alec's strong fingers clamp around his wrist, and with a last straining pull Magnus finds himself up on the bridge. He clears the guardrail with Alec gripping his hand and falls against it with a huffy laugh. The tremble in his fingers will pass. It isn't, in fact, the first time he's scaled a wall by muscle alone.

He tells Alec so.

"I figured." Alec glows with a faint, wild joy that makes Magnus rather unable to look away from him.

"You've made that climb before."

"That and some others. I used to come here when the bridge was shut." Alec makes a quixotic face. "That was how I found it. Abandoned. Since you asked, there were probably some motley Seelies getting high on dream gels under the bridge, but nobody came up here."

The High Bridge is, Magnus's memory supplies, the oldest standing bridge in the city. It even predates his acquaintance with New York. It spent decades closed for traffic—a standing relic ripe for the exploration efforts of restless Shadowhunter boys.

The lampposts set at intervals along the span of the bridge gleam like watchful eyes through currents of river mist rising from below. At the far end, on the Manhattan side, Magnus glimpses the old water tower against the washed-out violet sky.

"Sometimes I'd bring my bow." Alec folds his arms across his chest, then drops them slack again. "Shoot arrows along the walkway. Scare the birds."

"You know." Magnus straightens himself, touching light fingers to Alec's elbow. "I don't think I've ever walked across this bridge. Shall we?"

Alec agrees with a tiny cant of his head.

The sense of being on high grows step by step. The treetops and the noises of traffic below fall away. The lamps beckon them, bright against the soft line of the opposite shore. Alec's steps begin to meander, and Magnus matches his pace. The tiles of the walkway are new and tidy, but it isn't hard to imagine a veneer of disuse on everything, grass pushing up through dislodged tiles.

Not hard at all to imagine how inviting and desolate a place it may have been, before Parks and Recreation slapped a coat of paint and some safety netting on its cracked majesty.

They're also to thank for the benches fitted on the bridge near the halfway point. Away from the sounds of either shore, the benches make an island of calm in the summer night. The city recedes into a backdrop of glittering lights and the occasional gust of muck and brine, exhaust and greenery.

Alec stops beside a bench. Magnus breaks out of staring at Alec's left hand, pushing back the notion that he wants to slide his own into it.

He's not sure they're there yet. That's a paradox, when they _can_ get derailed into sex at the flimsiest excuse imaginable. But holding hands while walking means something different, like kissing on a street corner does.

Magnus is starting to comprehend how out of practice _he_ is. This is Alec's first time—at dating, courting, whatever the word is this time—but it's also Magnus's first time in an age where he could show open affection for another man in the streets of a Western metropolis in any way that smacks of romance. The Downworld's always been a permissive place; the ordinary mortals have plenty of catching up to do.

And Alec is a Shadowhunter. An extraordinary one, to be sure, but born and raised in a society that won't suffer the whole truth of him. It would rather excise the truth of him if it could.

"It was just about here." Alec hoists himself to sit on the back of the bench, as if there weren't a perfectly good seat there.

Shaking off his musings, Magnus settles beside him, leaning in over the back so their shoulders brush. "Another bit of reminiscence?"

"Yeah. Jace had this stupid idea, he'd toss apples into the air and I'd try to hit 'em. So we got a sack of apples and sneaked out one night. We were—fourteen, fifteen." Alec arches up against the leverage of his hands. "No runes. That was always the rule here. He said to me, I bet you can't do six."

"That sounds like a challenge."

"Everything with Jace could be a challenge. Wasn't always, but... You learn to pick up on it. Anyway. I told him I'd do seven. We made a bet for something, I forget what. He tried to make it as hard for me as he could. Faked throws, lost one apple over the guardrail." Rare pride twists Alec's voice. "I hit them all. Except the one that went into the river."

"I'm not surprised," Magnus says, though he wasn't certain which way this story was going to go. He tries to picture Alec with his parabatai, adolescent and coltish and gangly, at a constant game of one-upmanship.

Their interplay still seems much the same. Jace is a complex thing for Alec: their fraught closeness has no equal, for better and worse. Magnus prefers to step softly around the topic, but Alec is the one who's invited it in.

"I hit them all, and Jace—" A hesitation there. Magnus hums an encouragement. It would be utterly boorish to refuse Alec now.

"I know he can be an ass," Alec says. "When you said I had, what was it, competitive spirit? Half of that is just from keeping up with him. So when I won, I was expecting him to be sour about it. But he just grinned at me, in that stupid brilliant way he has, clapped me on the back, and said something like, I knew you'd get them."

Something pings at Magnus. Call it a premonition. He doesn't know if Alec brought him here to hear this story, or just to share a place that means something to him, but the moment is brittle as a chip of ice cupped in a palm.

"Alec. If this is a confession of some kind, you don't have to. I understand."

"That was the moment I knew. I knew that I wanted something I could never have. Not just from him, but from anyone, ever." Alec's hands lie on the back of the bench with deceptive calm. Clearly he won't be dissuaded. "I—put it on Jace, what I felt, what I wanted. I had to keep it somewhere. Now, thinking back, I could've picked a worse option, right? Somebody who would've hated me for it."

There are two voices competing in Magnus: the gentle, sensible one that would repeat _There's nothing wrong with you_ , and the fiery, crackling one that whispers _I would fight them all for your sake._

He sets his cheek against the back of Alec's shoulder. "I don't know the answer to that. But I do know that anyone would be privileged to be loved by you."

If there's a filament of some wild, unstudied hope in Magnus's words, who can judge him? Who can judge Alec, now or then, as a boy trying to temper a rattling discovery he couldn't share with a soul?

Alec's sigh hitches in his throat. "I'm sorry. This wasn't really what I was gonna tell you."

"Well," Magnus says, half muffled into Alec's shirt, "I'm glad you did, anyway."

A little awkwardly, Alec turns on his perch, nudging Magnus back. Alec's hand presses to the small of his back instead. "I've got better stories about this place. I've come here to be sad or angry. But this is—is a place where I could always be me. With Jace, or with Izzy, or alone."

 _No magic, no runes_ , Magnus thinks again. The angelic blood in Alec is as much a part of him as the demonic essence is a part of Magnus. Shadowhunters aren't tapped into their heritage to the same depth that warlocks are, not with such instinctual intensity, and their powers are always bound up with their duty.

It would no doubt be freeing, sometimes, to make a place for oneself where that duty can be set aside.

"Or with me?" Magnus's own voice is hushed.

"Uh." Alec's train of thought seems to stall. It's a touch adorable. "Obviously. If you want."

"I might." He _does._ Even if Alec makes him climb the side of the bridge every time. Alec is sitting angled over his own hip, his whole attention on Magnus. He bears it for a moment, the steady light of it, before glancing away.

It's Alec's fingers on his jaw that steer him back, the touch a hope rather than a demand. Something opens in the scant space between their faces.

Alec's nose presses into Magnus's cheek as they kiss, without rush, without heat, in a slow study of each other. He's not sure they've had one like this before, shivering through him in a warm ripple. It tastes like possibility.

"Any time, then," Alec says, barely parting their mouths, and kisses him again.

**Author's Note:**

> Come say hello on tumblr @[poemsfromthealley](https://poemsfromthealley.tumblr.com/) or twitter @[juneofthepen](https://twitter.com/juneofthepen)!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Podfic: the man who bridged the sky](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17473580) by [Djapchan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Djapchan/pseuds/Djapchan)




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